The endless string of layoffs that have plagued the gaming industry since 2023-2024 continues today, with two more studios announcing job cuts: "Dead by Daylight" developer Behaviour Interactive has laid off 40 employees and " Lord of the Fallen" publisher CI Games has cut 10% of its workforce.

CI Games' layoffs reportedly mainly took a toll on the company's marketing team, but GamesIndustry reports that the company's Hexworks and Underdog internal studios were also affected. CI Games' CEO Marek Tymiński later confirmed the report, stating: "In order to maintain the strength and stability of our business, CI Games has made a tough but necessary decision and will be making job cuts affecting approximately 10% of our total workforce.

"We want to thank each and every employee for the role they have played during their time with us. Further business optimizations are being made to the organization's pipeline and processes."

Behaviour Interactive confirmed its own layoffs, first reported by Kotaku, in a statement provided to PC Gamer.

"Due to recent changes in market conditions, we have had to adjust the scope of several Behaviour projects. 'In these situations, our preference is always to redeploy personnel to other projects. Unfortunately, this option is not always available." These departures represent less than 3% of our total workforce," he said. The representative later added that a total of 40 employees were laid off.

The layoffs were made despite the continued success of both companies. Behaviour, on the other hand, has been going strong for several years with its survival horror "Dead by Daylight," which recently crossed over between horror icon Chucky and Remedy's beleaguered pseudo-author Alan Wake; Behaviour recently released a "Dead by Daylight universe, and has also announced a single player project, The Casting of Frank Stone, which will be released this year.

Both layoffs are part of a broader pattern of cuts across the gaming industry that will dominate headlines through 2023 and continue unabated into 2024: already in the first half of January, Bossa Studios, Unity, Twitch, Discord, Lost Boys Interactive. While layoffs are unfortunate, they are not uncommon in business: it is not atypical for studios to cut staff after the release of a new game, successful or not.

The pattern of layoffs plaguing the gaming industry is largely the result of overly aggressive expansion in the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic, which management has now determined is no longer sustainable: Unity and Discord, for example, during recent layoffs "agility ", and Twitch CEO Daniel Clancy said last week that the company is "still bigger than it needs to be"

while announcing last week that he would lay off more than 500 employees in addition to the more than 400 laid off in March 2023.